I too hate apps that can't recover from a crash, but these days OO doesn't seem to be one of them. Their auto-recovery seems to be quite effective--you can lose a couple of minutes worth of work, but not a whole lot more. I guess it would be even better if it could save every last bit on crash, but no complaints here. I get more annoyed that OO doesn't know how to clear things out of its recovery queue, and will try to recover files long after they are gone.
Gimp, OTOH, could seriously use some crash recovery ability!